Hair Wars

I suppose that given their demonstrated lack of ability to influence anything that actually matters in relation to local education, public school administrators decide to, instead, focus their efforts on meaningless dress codes.

As a kid going to high school in the early to mid 70's, the war between the students and the Powers That Be centered on a few meaningless measures - to wit: the length of one's hair, and the clothes one wore. I was required to wear a coat and tie all through high school, and keep my hair short.

We obeyed the first law by making a mockery of it - we wore our forest green coats with purple shirts and green and yellow paisley ties, knotted so that the knot looked like a malignant goiter dangling under our chins, with the dangly part of the tie barely reaching to the third button of our dress shirts, the collars of which were invariably rumpled and turned up

We teased, sprayed, and poofed our hair into giant protein helmets to keep it off our collars, as the reg said that those collars, and our ears, need be untouched by human hair - the lazier among us tied it into ponytails, stuffed the tails down the back of those unkempt collars, and then plotted our routes between classes to avoid the Prefect of Discipline (which was what we called the Enforcer known in most public schools as the Asst. Principal)

Oh yeah, we also published an underground newspaper, run off on the school mimeograph machines while the Man wasn't looking, known as "The Ax." The subtitle under the banner on the front page was "Give 'Em the Ax." Among it's pseudononymously authored content, decorating muckraking paragraphs comparing the administrators to Fascist Dictators, Hitler, or even worse, to Nixon, would be a few cartoons showing the student body's current foes (said Prefect of Discipline, strict teachers, etc.) in a graphic depiction of being beheaded, with the masked executioner being labeled the Student Body, and the stump upon which their heads had lately been rested, before flying off trailing tails of blood, as "Destiny," or some other suitable symbol, I actually forget which, after all these years.

In short, it was rabble-rousing demagogic propaganda of the most amateurish implementation imaginable.

Here's the punch line - the year I graduated from this all-male, Jesuit school, my class of 120-odd classmates had twelve of us as National Merit Scholars, more than any of the much larger public schools in the city, and on a pro-rata basis, among the best in the nation.

The school is still in business today, with, if anything, an even stronger record and reputation, though all the dress restrictions that the school fought to uphold in those days are dead.

Stupidity has a long half-life, though, and still lives on in schools across the nation.

A local Houston school, in fact, the one which I would have attended had I not gone to that Jesuit school, has suspended an 18 year-old student for having dyed her hair a bit too red for their taste.

"The student handbook states a student's appearance cannot be a distraction in class. "

Segregate the sexes - the churning pots of raging hormones that are teenage brains spend more time distracted by the opposite sex than they ever have or will do about their studies.

This was true decades before high school girls started coloring their hair, or high school boys started growing theirs - seems as though a few generations of American kids were able to learn something despite it.

True Fact: A pretty girl with big knockers bouncing around in her skimpy cheerleader's uniform at the pep rally is gonna distract waaaaay more boys from Shakespeare and calculus than some skrawnky goth chick with purple and green hair, in a black jacket festooned with more chains than Marley's ghost, and safety pins through her nose, a-clanking around at the local peace rally.

Teens need nothing to distract them. They do it all themselves. In high school, I was a daydreamin', note-writin' fool.

It doesn't take a bottle of hair dye to distract a teenager. All it takes is consciousness. :-)

Paul Graham voiced what I suspected all along (read the article—it's Marcus-length but worth the read)—that school is little more than a part-time prison for kids.

What started out as a training ground for assembly-line workers has outlived its worth, what with manufacturing in the US having been moved to Greater Asia and our own slowly shifting economy to a services based one; the educational system has yet to catch up (although I doubt it ever will for there's way too much money in the current system to change on a dime—just look at the RIAA and MPAA trying to legislate their empires into law). Now that most schools have given up nearly all pretense to being in education (I have heard horror stories from a friend who used to be a high school English teacher) and gone on to what they really are—name me one prison that lets their population color their hair (or actually wear what they want).

See now why it's understandable their reaction to a student going outside the bounds of what is considered “acceptable behavior?”

-spc (I say ban the schools!)

seems to me its all about asserting authority and not about sense. i have learned that the elementary school i went to will now suspend students for having rubber bands, paper clips, or scissors with a sharp edge. all when the perfect weapon is a freshly sharpened pencil. im afraid our public schools are working overtime to prepare youngsters to be sheep. we need to encourage independant thought.